1. Technical Field
The present invention is directed toward a system and method of handling a database service request to a database server for a database service. In particular, the system and method is directed to enabling cryptographic information stored in database servers to be sent to a mobile data communication device (“mobile device”) for cryptographic e-mail messaging.
2. Description of the Related Art
A cryptographic e-mail message can be a signed message, an encrypted message, or a signed and encrypted message. Standards supporting cryptographic messaging include Secure Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (S/MIME), Pretty Good Privacy™ (PGP™), OpenPGP and other secure e-mail standards and protocols. Cryptographic information, such as digital certificates, public keys, and the like, is often stored in a server accessible over a network, such as a Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) server. When a cryptographic message is to be sent by a user of a computer device, the cryptographic information, such as a public key corresponding to a recipient's e-mail address, may not be directly available to the user. The cryptographic information may instead be obtained by querying the directory of an LDAP server.
On a desktop system, the sender may, for example, use a browser program to perform a multi-pass query with the LDAP server to select specific cryptographic information from the LDAP server. Some actions available to a desktop user, however, may not be available to a mobile device user. Furthermore, LDAP queries can return large responses that may exceed the storage capacity of the mobile device, as well as exceed the bandwidth capacity of a wireless network if the mobile device is configured for wireless data communication over the wireless network.
European patent application EP 1113648 A3 describes a system for facilitating generic registration of plug-ins for a directory server. An LDAP proxy acts as an intermediary between a client and a directory server. The LDAP proxy calls methods from registered plug-in modules that indicate an interest in any directly entries affected by a client request. The plug-in module is registered with the LDAP proxy during start-up or during an LDAP session, and a response message indicating success or failure of the registration is sent to a client.
GloMop Group document XP-002094009 describes a proxy server for mobile computing devices. The proxy server provides distillation of a requested document and incremental refinement of the requested document.